RETURN OF THE CHILDREN - A PIED PIPER TALE

It was a bright sunny day in Hamelyn and the birds like motley coloured merry pipers were whistling in the trees when into the town, a brightly dressed band of men and women came marching, playing upon pipes and banging drums.
No one recognized them at first but then one of the young men approaching an old woman who was sweeping the front step of her house said to her,
"Mama, it is me Gerhard. Your son. I have come home".
Weeping with joy as she recognized him the old woman threw down her broom and embraced the young man.
"Oh Gerhard", she said, "I thought I would never see you again".
Then running inside her house, she called to her husband, "Erwin! Erwin come quickly! Our son has come home. Gerhard has come home".
Then the old woman emmerged again from her house with her husband and they both started to embrace him, weeping with joy.
And suddenly, all round about, similar scenes started to occur with towns people recognizing their sons or daughters among the band of young men and women and running over to them.
The strange band, you see, were none other than the children that the Pied Piper had taken from Hamelyn years ago, all now young men and women.
And when all the young people had been reunited with their parents they were all invited to come to the town hall because the Mayor of Hamelyn wanted to know all about their experience; where the piper lived, what had happened to them and who he was.
But the young man, Gerhard explained that they had all taken the pipers oath, swearing never to tell anything about him or what had happened to them and he recited the oath,
"Upon the pipers pipe, I swear
no matter what, no matter where
or who may question me or why,
I'll keep his secrets till I die"

 

"All I can say is that it was good living with the piper and I was happy; we were all happy", said a young woman named Adelheide, "We call ourselves die glücklichen, the fortunate because we feel fortunate and grateful to him for taking us with him and I'm certain that theres not one among us who swore the pipers oath who would ever betray him".
But the mayor was not happy with this answer, you see he had a private, personal reason for wanting to know about the Piper; long ago he had been the child on crutches who had tried to follow the piper with the other children but had got left behind and he had been jealous of the other children all his life and had never forgiven the piper for leaving him behind.
And so he tried every means within his power to get the young men and women who called themselves die glücklichen to reveal the pipers secrets.
He offered each of them bribes; piles of gold but they did not want the gold; he tried to threaten them with their imprisonment and the imprisonment of their parents but they  said the Piper would protect them and so finally he decided that he must try and use them to trap the piper in someway and so he gave one of them, a young man named Kasper a golden pipe and he asked him to take it to the piper as a gift from the people of Hamelyn then, with 3 thugs he had hired, he followed Kasper believing that he would lead them to the Piper.
And when they followed Kasper he did indeed lead them to the Piper who was sitting upon a rock infront of a river playing meditatively upon his pipe.
"Ahh Kasper", he said, "It is good to see you and I see that you brought some rats with you. I thought I'd got rid of all the rats in Hamelyn".
Kasper looked surprised.
"Rats?", he asked.
But then the Pied piper told Kasper to turn around and look and when he did, to his astonishment, he saw 4 rats, one of them wearing a mayors chain of office then, when the Piper played upon the golden pipe that Kasper had brought him, the rats leapt into the river and, thinking that Hamelyn needed a new mayor, he placed the mayoral chain around Kaspers neck.
"Go and be a good mayor, remember all the virtues that I taught you and the other children and serve the people of Hamelyn well", he said and saying that the piper blew upon his pipe and, like pipe music that floats upon the air, he was gone.